Morbid Romantic

Book Review & Personal Blog

Title: Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919–1950
Author(s): Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore
Genre: Nonfiction – History
Finished: February 3, 2010
Rating: 3 Stars

Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950 by Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore redefines the standard chronology of the Civil Rights movement, popularly known for its post-WWII activity. Post-WWII civil rights action would culminate in achievement with Brown v. Board of Education and the 1964 and 1965 Acts of President Johnson. As the title of the book indicates, and according to Gilmore, civil rights in fact had far earlier and far more radical origins in Communism, labor, Fascism and anti-Fascism, and the Popular Front. She substantiates her thesis by tracing the activity of these movements, and by placing within them the African Americans and whites involved who both worked together and in opposition to one another to end or continue Jim Crow. The issue of black civil rights is typically isolated to the United States and is considered to be historically a distinct American problem. By highlighting the involvement of radical movements that found their roots in Europe, Gilmore places African American civil rights on an international stage and redefines it within the context of what the world was experiencing and how this weaved into American culture.

Gilmore shows that in America there was an active Communist Party that was focused on illuminating how racism created class differences, and had a purpose to overcome this class inequality by organizing Southern black laborers into a force white supremacists could not reckon with. The CPUSA would become a major player in calling for an end to Jim Crow and white supremacy, and would operate at the same time of the NAACP, whom the communists considered too conservative and bourgeois. The distinction between the two is one where the Communist Party favored direct action and the NAACP preferred legal means to solve issues, and Gilmore states that when placed alongside Communism, the conservative nature of the NAACP is stark (7). In emphasizing this simplistic distinction between the two, Gilmore slights the NAACP of some of its own influence and early contribution. Though less radical in comparison to a system like Communism, the NAACP nevertheless operated within a legal system that was hostile to them. When placed within the cultural context of America in the early 20th century, the NAACP was also radical in its own way because it defied the ‘place’ of the African American, and the organization enjoyed many successes of its own. For example, the NAACP played a major role in the 1923 Moore v. Dempsey decision that strengthened due process and African American’s Constitutional rights. It was not only the Communist Party that took an interest in labor either, though Gilmore makes it seem as if labor was a CPUSA concern only and does not mention that the NAACP was involved in the creation of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first African American labor union (52). Though these successes are certainly not as radical as labor marches through the streets of Gastonia, they are still significant to early civil rights radicalism.

In keeping with the international scope of civil rights and the importance of the Communist Party, Gilmore brings to light that Africa Americans even went to Russia, had audience with Stalin himself, and many even let out sighs of relief to be in a country where they could, for the first time, enjoy life without fear. African American civil rights and Communism are two movements not typically linked together. In placing them together, Gilmore effectively rewrites civil rights history to include world wide involvement. She does similarly with Fascism in the United States. Gilmore reveals that Fascist ideology was intertwined with white supremacy (106), yet Gilmore does not adequately make the connection between the ideologies of Fascism and white supremacy to explain how white supremacists co-opted Fascism into their beliefs. Additionally, Gilmore splits up the influence of Fascism into two different sections, one in which she describes how some Americans embraced it early on, and then how later Fascism became linked with Communism and Nazi policy, and was thereafter largely rejected within America. Gilmore skips from one to the other without describing the intermediate years and how white supremacists that were once Fascist came to reject the ideology. Gilmore makes it clear why they did, but does not trace how or what happened to the former Black Shirt white supremacist American Fascists.

Gilmore focuses her narrative on select people and groups, which allows her to make her points without filling pages with names and events that would have made the monograph dense and less fluid. Through the experiences of her select characters, Gilmore documents the progress of movements and is then allowed to move on with her point made by their examples. As she admits in her introduction, she leaves out a significant portion of people in the South who played major roles in the Civil Rights movement (11). As reviewer Michael Dennis points out, the people ignored “forged precisely the kind of political linkages that defined the popular front and did a good deal more grass roots organizing in the South than Fort-Whiteman.” While leaving out these groups of people and their contributions does not weaken the argument Gilmore is trying to make, adding them would have strengthened her narrative by illustrating the scope of the work the Popular Front involved itself in. While she leaves out some groups and people, she includes other often overlooked players such as Truman’s committee on civil rights, adding another layer to the retelling of conventional civil rights history (409).

Gilmore’s limited focus allows her to incorporate an element of familiarity that makes her story easier and more enjoyable to read. The people involved in the movements she writes about become more than just names, but people with personalities. The emotional connection forged with these people give the book a sense of intimacy. Much like in her previous book, Gender & Jim Crow, Gilmore uses this feeling of familiarity to make assumptions about people’s feelings and motivations that cannot be supported by evidence. For instance, Gilmore assumes that Louise Thompson must have been hiding something about her feelings for African American Communist Lovett Fort-Whiteman (143). She does the same when she attempts to psychoanalyze the reticence of Alain Locke and attributes it to an attraction to the charismatic Langston Hughes (137). These are things that Gilmore herself simply cannot know without personal testimony. In some cases, Gilmore is able to more successfully pull off her personal narratives. When she describes the death of Fort-Whiteman, she adds a touching reflection of his last moments that closes up the extraordinary life of this very unique man (154). It is in moments like those that Gilmore fosters a true emotional connection between her book and the reader. The combination of humanization and the personalization of events with a unique historical interpretation make Defying Dixie an essential book on the civil rights movement. Defying Dixie adds a new layer to the understanding of how the civil rights movement progressed, and what influenced the later movement. While it does not rewrite the entirety of the movement, it inserts a new level that should not be overlooked.

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Disclaimer(s):

- More can be found in my Reviews section.
- If you would like me to review your book, send an email to me at morbidromantic@gmail.com. Read my Book Review Policy for more information.

Title: Gender & Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920
Author(s): Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore
Genre: Nonfiction – History
Finished: January 20, 2010
Rating: 4 Stars

Gender & Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920 by Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore approaches the postbellum disenfranchisement of African American men and the accompanying racism and violence through the lens of gender history. Though the title is misleading in that it speaks of women and their involvement with politics and white supremacy, it is not merely a work of women’s history. Gilmore actually encompasses more than just the stories and accounts of women in her study. In staying true to gender history, Gilmore constructs narratives that illustrate the changing social perceptions of femininity and masculinity in North Carolina following the Reconstruction, and then further divides gender by race lines. In doing so, she presents an illuminating image of how gender and race became linked, describing how it defined both whites and blacks, and how race came to define gender expectations and cultivated racial stereotypes. Finally, she describes how racist ideas became the backbone for an exclusionary policy that would remove political power and much upward mobility from blacks, ushering in the age of Jim Crow law. Gilmore’s study gives to historians a new way to look at the justifications of Jim Crow because it establishes an evolving social perception of what separated blacks from whites and how ideas of race were constructed to the disfavor of black Americans. Throughout, she links everything to women and how they were perceived, treated, and personally acted, which makes this book a good addition to women’s history, as well as to the wider scope of gender history.

The narrative in Gender & Jim Crow focuses on a prominent African American family, the Petteys. From humble origins, Charles and Sarah Pettey were icons of the promises of Reconstruction and freedom. Educated and bold proponents of black enfranchisement and rights, they encompassed the hopes of their generation that they too could obtain an equal standing with whites, and are representative of that overall optimism. One of the greatest strengths of Gender & Jim Crow is how Gilmore uses the Pettey family to illustrate just how divergent the social ideals of blacks and whites were at the time, and how Jim Crow stunted the progress of many deserving and intelligent blacks. Gilmore expresses perfectly the dynamics of how social ideas come from history and experience by stating that blacks shared a tradition of relative gender egalitarianism, which allowed black women to become more prominent than white women were allowed to be within the patriarchal restrictions of their separate society. In doing so, Gilmore is able to present a very telling picture of how both distinct groups defined their own identity, and just what elements made up those identities. While these concepts are by no means new, Gilmore is clear cut and yet unique in her gender and sexually based approach.

By paying enough attention to the workings of the Pettey family, their ups and their downs, the book is intimately presented and is a compelling and interesting read. The firsthand accounts within give life to the story rather than have it rendered through fact and theory alone. However, limiting the focus of a book to a small group can distort the scope of the facts and lead to misinterpretations of the general overall experience since not everyone shared in the same events, emotions, and fortunes. One person’s experiences are not common to all. Gilmore avoids that trap successfully by incorporating the firsthand accounts of other blacks and whites, so her book neither distorts the scope of her subject nor presents a severely limited picture too small in scale to be a major part of larger political and social happenings. There is a range of personalities, conflicting and coming together, to round out the Pettey family. Lower class African Americans are, however, severely unrepresented. So much less vocal, and often times unable to leave behind a documentary trail through writing, the volumes of information left behind by educated, higher class African Americans dim their voices. The hardships endured by the lower class, and the natural limitations of people without money or sufficient education, would make their stories much less dramatic, but they were still impacted by Jim Crow and certainly had something to say. After all, the title of the book does not say it is only about middle class blacks, and lower class whites are discussed in depth. Gilmore does the same by including details about the black experience throughout the Deep South, letting readers know that her focus remains in North Carolina, which was not representative of the entire south.

In working with people and their intimate experiences, there are other traps. One of these traps Gilmore succumbs to, but is largely able to justify doing so. When becoming close to a group of people in such a personal subject, there is a tendency to make assumptions about people’s feelings and motivations, which cannot be known unless explicitly stated and not confirmed because these people cannot be asked. For example, with a flair of psychohistory, Gilmore states that white supremacist Thomas Dixon Jr. focused so much on sexuality and the mixing of races because he could not come to terms with the sexuality of the pure white Southern woman, especially his mother. There is no way for Gilmore to know the inner insecurities of Dixon. In other cases of these assumed motivations and feelings, Gilmore is amply able to substantiate them with quotes and actions that illustrate how inner feelings were projected into outward action. For instance, Gilmore looks at the actions of more aggressive blacks and attempts to get into their heads to define the root of their anger and what they hoped to achieve. While Gilmore can never know their inner workings, she does validate her insights by using examples of how blacks defied the limitations placed on them and acted contrary to what was expected of them as an outlet and a show of their own freedom and rights, even if this meant walking on a sidewalk or jabbing with an umbrella.

Gender & Jim Crow is well documented with a vast collection of primary and secondary sources. Personal papers, interviews, and newspaper articles make up the bulk of primary sources, but there are also annual reports, directories, convention meeting minutes, legal documents, and official reports used. Primary sources make up the majority of her sources, which allows her analysis to be driven by original interpretation. Context is strengthened by the use of many secondary sources, and Gilmore makes good use of the scholarship available to corroborate her facts with setting. However, there is not a great deal of recent scholarship used, at least very little within the decade that had preceded the book’s publication. Gilmore neglects what recent scholars may have said on her subject and could have enriched her own study with more updated findings.

So many people assume that Jim Crow was an almost immediate after effect of the freeing of slaves. It is thought that a nearly instantaneous disenfranchisement stopped the possible progress of promising African Americans before they even had a chance to start. Gilmore’s study turns this understanding around and presents a different perspective: African Americans enjoyed a brief period of progress, albeit never entirely unrestricted or without negative feelings from whites. This insight is vital to understanding Jim Crow because it makes even more devastating just what was taken away from African Americans, and just how far they were marginalized. It shows what was truly denied them, and in doing so, it humanizes the subject. Gilmore is also adept at showing how African Americans created new political avenues to give to history an understanding of how blacks adapted to their surroundings and fought for influence such as black women did with Progressive community action. One of the greatest strengths of Gender & Jim Crow is that Gilmore really makes a reader feel the sadness, the frustrations, and the anger coming from both sides. It is not merely a history text, but a story full of unique people. This makes Gender & Jim Crow something that both a scholar and a casual reader can enjoy and understand.¹

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Disclaimer(s):

- More can be found in my Reviews section.
- If you would like me to review your book, send an email to me at morbidromantic@gmail.com. Read my Book Review Policy for more information.

1. The following review was done as part of a graded assignment and was turned in accordingly. [↩]